The Livestock and Poultry Environmental Stewardship Curriculum

- Success Story -

This program is just one example of Extension programming that has positively impacted animal waste management. Please check back periodically for other highlighted programs.

LPES Curriculum: Educating Producers and Advisors

The Livestock and Poultry Environmental Stewardship (LPES) Curriculum is educating producers and advisors in the livestock and poultry industry nationwide how to manage animal waste properly and implement best management practices thereby reducing water quality impacts from livestock and poultry feeding operations.

Situation

Animal waste from farms and livestock/poultry and dairy production operations can severely threaten water quality if not managed properly. Animal waste from the 1.3 million farms with livestock and poultry across the nation has the potential to contribute excess nutrients, pathogens, organic matter, solids, and odorous compounds to the environment. This pollution can cause eutrophication of surface waters, degradation of ground water quality, and threats to human health.

Actions

The LPES curriculum was developed as a result of a grant for U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (US EPA) to summarize the current scientific knowledge base in producer and advisor targeted educational resources that addressed environmental issues facing the livestock industry. USDA CSREES provided project management oversight. A team of 30+ individuals from 15 Land-Grant Universities, USDA ARS and NRCS, and US EPA participated.

This curriculum includes 26 lessons grouped into six modules, environmental stewardship and/or regulatory compliance assessment tools for most lessons, and Power Point presentations for each lesson. Please visit the Curriculum Lessons page of the LPES web site for more information.

Impacts

The LPES Curriculum team has resulted in:

A comprehensive, national in scope, peer-reviewed curriculum consisting of 26 lessons and supporting tools.
Sustained national access to this product through the MidWest Plan Service at Iowa State University.
Participation by 475 state representatives from 46 states in one of 11 regional LPES workshops. 43% of participants were from Land-Grant Universities.
An extensive review of EPA CAFO rules and summarization of the major issues in CAFO Fact Sheets .
Recognition by US EPA (partial funding source for this project) of the critical role that USDA institutions will play in the implementation of educational programs targeting livestock environmental issues. Rick Colbert, Director of EPA's Agricultural Division, recently shared the following comments: "EPA sincerely appreciates the extraordinary contribution made by all of the members on the Livestock and Poultry Environmental Stewardship curriculum team in promoting environmental stewardship to the livestock production industry….The Team has produced a first-class set of training materials on environmental stewardship that has been enthusiastically endorsed by EPA and USDA both."

Several states were surveyed as to their current and planned uses of this curriculum. The following two examples illustrate the uses being made of this educational product:

Illinois Team. The University of Illinois Extension is rapidly moving ahead to adopt the LPES curriculum materials as the state livestock manager certification curriculum. During the next three years approximately 3,000 Illinois producers will be certified using the LPES materials.
Georgia Team. In conjunction with the Georgia Department of Agriculture, the Georgia Cooperative Extension Service is using LPES curriculum lessons to provide continuing education units (CEUs) to certified operators in Georgia. Future plans include making each module available online as a self-study guide.